Article Summary: Once a symbol of Soviet naval power, Russia’s Kirov-class battlecruisers are now approaching obsolescence. With the decommissioning of Pyotr Velikiy, only Admiral Nakhimov remains, raising questions about its strategic utility.
Key Point #1 – Despite recent efforts to bring it back online, analysts argue that the cost of maintaining this massive nuclear-powered vessel could be better spent on modern frigates, corvettes, and submarines equipped with hypersonic missiles.
Key Point #2 – As Russia’s economy struggles under the strain of war-driven military spending, the fate of the last Kirov-class battlecruiser remains uncertain—does it still have a role, or is it a relic of a bygone era?
The End of an Era? Russia’s Kirov-Class Battlecruisers Fade Away
I was living in Moscow in the late 1990s and enjoying the last years before the dawn of Vladimir Putin’s kleptocratic dictatorship (before those of us writing about news in the defense world had to leave the soon-to-be KGB-ruled country).
I remember the news when the nuclear-powered Kirov-class battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy was launched. The common sentiment was, “Why is it needed, especially given so many other pressing national problems.”
The ship was the fourth and last of the Kirov-class battlecruisers, known as the world’s largest surface combatants, weighing in at several times the tonnage of most of their contemporaries in the US, China, and other navies in the world.
The argument has been that given the ability of smaller ships to deliver precision-strike missiles over long ranges, the expense of operating these much larger vessels cannot be justified.
Just last month, the decision was made to decommission the ship, leaving only one ship in the Kirov series, the Admiral Nakhimov, still in service. In 2021, CEO of the Severnoye Design Bureau Andrei Dyachkov was quoted discussing the improvements to the cruiser: “The high modernisation potential integrated in these ships upon their designing helped carry out certain works and outfit the Admiral Nakhimov with the most advanced weapons, which makes it the world’s strongest surface combat ship.”
However, having the most powerful surface vessel in the world does not necessarily mean that it adds the needed combat power in today’s security environment. The Malaysian military affairs publication Defence Security Asia assessed, “While Pyotr Velikiy was once a cornerstone of Soviet and Russian naval dominance, analysts largely agree that its strategic relevance has diminished in today’s evolving naval warfare landscape.”
Declining Resources and Idled Shipyards
In the last two decades of the Soviet Union’s naval buildup most of the resources were put into modernizing the submarine fleet. In the process, the Sevmash submarine complex in Severodvinsk, close to Arkhangelsk, became one of the world’s largest shipyards, and there were other centers in Komsomolsk-na-Amur and at Nizhny Novgorod.
But by the late 1990s, Severodvinsk was the proverbial sole survivor. It was one of the only navy yards to have actual naval work to carry out. The Russian Navy continued, and still does today, to turn out nuclear-powered submarines each year while Severodvinsk was forced to convert to other work like production of offshore drilling platforms.
Russian industry has long depended on export sales to accomplish two tasks. One is to generate revenue to support its own domestic military procurement. The history of Moscow’s sales to foreign customers is replete with examples of China, India, or some other country forking out a large sum of cash to be the launch customer for a new weapon system.
Then, once the foreign buyer has paid for all of the start-up costs and the production line is up and running, Russia can “piggyback” on the foreign production in order to build units for its armed forces. Programs like the Sukhoi Su-30MKI for India are a prime example.
True to form, Russia tried to interest foreign nations in surface warships for sale to accomplish these ends but found that there were very few takers. The single weapon systems that most of Moscow’s friends were interested in were submarines.
A Battlecruiser Class With No Future
United States Navy ship-builders point out to 19FortyFive that there are specific reasons for deciding to procure nuclear-powered surface ships.
The main one is that if you have a large surface ship that is not nuclear-powered, you must have a fleet of tankers trailing behind it to keep its diesel engines running. If the vessel is nuclear-powered, then that relieves the Navy’s logistics planners of the need to maintain that considerable number of “oilers,” as they are called.
When the Russian Navy reported that it had brought the two nuclear reactors that power the Admiral Nakhimov back online, it indicated the warship should begin sea trials in the nearest future. State media reported the first reactor to have been brought back online in late December, while the second followed on 2 February.
Aerial starboard quarter view of the Soviet Kirov-class guided missile destroyer FRUNZE underway back in 1985.
“The consecutive physical launch of the cruiser’s two reactors demonstrates the readiness of the entire nuclear powerplant of the ship for operation in all modes,” as TASS, the Russian state news agency, reported.
Most naval analysts now assess that there is very little rationale for keeping this single Kirov-class ship in service for very long. Most of the activity in the Russian Navy is geared towards building frigates, corvettes, and submarines equipped with modern weapons like Tsirkon hypersonic missiles.
Russia’s economy is also reeling from the sharp increase in defense spending caused by the war. This causes observers to conclude the costs of maintaining this battlecruiser could be more effectively spent “in modernizing other fleet components or expanding Russia’s submarine capabilities, which offer stealth and strategic deterrence.”
Kirov-Class battlecruiser. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
